


and you're to blame

by couldaughter



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Brandon Dubinsky Is Bad At Feelings, First Kiss, M/M, Vaguely Defined Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 21:58:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17373983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldaughter/pseuds/couldaughter
Summary: Dubi soulbonds with Luc. It’s totally a mentor thing. Totally.





	and you're to blame

**Author's Note:**

  * For [void_fish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/void_fish/gifts).



Brandon really doesn’t mean for things to go the way they end up going, but he’s not going to complain. Complaining is for pussies and Penguins, and nobody else.

It all starts on a completely normal morning at Nationwide, a couple of weeks into rehab for a knee injury he’s lucky wasn’t a complete blowout. Coaching hockey is meant to be less medically threatening than playing it, but Brandon’s not noticed much of a difference so far.

At least Borky hasn’t done a fly-by to break his ribs. _Yet_.

Torts gives him a firm smack on the shoulder and a good morning on the way to the medical room. 

“How you holding up, kid?”

Torts doesn’t call Brandon kid anymore unless he wants something. Brandon is immediately suspicious, but not that worried. It takes a lot to worry him.

“Eh, not too bad, boss. Knee’s a bitch in the mornings but that’s what the trainers are for, y’know.”

“Glad to hear it,” says Torts. He must mean it, because he repeats it a couple of times. Brandon only realises then that Torts is herding him up to his office, not the med room. Weird.

Brandon knows the layout of Nationwide with his eyes shut at this point, but he tries to avoid the offices as much as humanly possible. About ninety percent of the time, getting called to an office is gonna be for a very bad reason, and Brandon really doesn’t want to get fired today. He’s just had new kitchen counters put in.

Still, he’s not gonna worry. Like he said, it takes a lot to worry him. The cold sweat he can feel incoming is nothing at all like worrying.

“Something up?” Brandon asks, as they get to the threshold of Torts’ office. He cranes his neck a little and spots the back of Luc’s head. “The kid get caught tugging pigtails or something?”

Torts just rolls his eyes and steps into the office, takes a seat behind the desk, gestures at Brandon to take the only empty chair. His elbow knocks into Luc’s as he sits down, leaning back and stretching out his legs. His knee’s gonna get stiff if this takes longer than a couple minutes.

He glances across at the kid, who looks honest-to-god anxious. Brandon nudges him with his elbow, deliberately this time, and gives him a quick grin. He doesn’t like to think about the way the smile he gets back makes his gut twist.

“Alright,” says Torts. He’s got his glasses on and he’s wearing a sweater over his button up. Brandon thinks of it as grandpa chic, not that he’s ever gonna let Torts know that. “Luc has a proposition for you, Dubi. I’m not gonna pretend I like it, but this kinda decision’s outta my hands anyway. Just -- think about it, alright?”

“Right,” says Brandon, dubiously. He turns to the kid, who is twenty four now and yet somehow not deeply resentful of the nickname he’s been saddled with for six years. The new contract probably helps.

Luc gives him a sheepish look. “I didn’t think this would get quite so much, uh, coacherly attention. It just occurred to me while I was babysitting for Savy that, uh, you could maybe do with some help. With the knee thing, I mean.” He wiggles his fingers meaningfully.

Brandon raises his eyebrows. It’s not exactly a secret that Luc’s got the gift, but he doesn’t go around shoving it in a guy’s face most of the time. Besides that one time after they got to the ECF, for which Brandon is still sworn to secrecy on pain of extreme blackmail.

He really doesn’t know where Sedsy got all that material from. He suspects Cam, who’d just whistled innocently when Brandon cornered him about it. Little bastard.

Luc is still wiggling his fingers, in a less meaningful way, mouth tugging up at one corner. He’s got glitter nail polish chipping off the index finger of his left hand. 

The kid has a pretty damn handsome smile, something Brandon spent a long time failing to notice because: kid. Now he’s less of a kid and more of a guy with a beard and a mortgage, although he still lets Savy’s kids use him as a jungle gym often enough that the illusion isn’t totally shattered.

“What d’you have in mind?” Brandon asks, because it’s not like he’s gonna say no to the opportunity to avoid weeks of physio. Apparently never skipping leg day actually does shit _to_ your knees.

“My mom always says a problem shared is a problem halved. It’s… you ever heard of transference?” Luc says, because apparently Brandon is never going to get a goddamn straight answer out of him. Kid is lucky Brandon… likes him. Not that he’s ever gonna _tell_ him that.

“That’s the thing Nick and Bob had going, right? Sharing the load kinda thing.” Nick and Bob were kind of legendary for it around the team, actually, before everything happened and they got legendary for other reasons. Bob was the one with the magic hands in that situation, though, and he was always supremely fucking cryptic about it, apparently for his own amusement.

Brandon tried prising answers outta Arty, once, when they were getting supremely fucking drunk together in the off-season after Arty retired, and got precisely nothing out of it beside the mother of all hangovers.

“Yeah, basically,” says Luc. “I do the spell, your knee feels better, you get my funky wrist, everyone goes home happy. It lasts a couple months, and any injuries you get are like, a quarter as bad. The magic always takes the brunt of it.” 

“What’s the catch?” Brandon has never met a gift horse he wouldn’t look directly in the mouth. Even if he lost fingers in the process.

Luc ducks his head and mumbles something genuinely incomprehensible. Brandon resists the urge to grab the guy by the chin.

He waits it out, anyway. He figures the silent _and_ incredulous treatment should work just fine.

The kid breaks after less than a minute, deliberately straightens his back and says, as clear as mud, “It’s kind of, uh, weird. To cast the spell. It’s weird.”

“Right,” says Brandon. “We gotta sacrifice a goat or something? Burn an effigy of Stinger at center ice?”

Luc looks, if anything, fucking _wistful_. Brandon is so goddamn glad he’s about as magical as a toothpick.

“Nah,” says Luc. “Look, I think it’ll be less awkward if we just get it over with. And if it’s not then, uh, we don’t actually have to see each other that much? Not that that’s a good thing, uh. Uh. Um.”

Brandon takes pity on him and leaves the office. “Get yourself together, kid. I’ll be in the locker room crying like a little bitch over my failed career.”

And then Brandon goes to the locker room and manfully sits in his old stall, with the latest first round kid’s nameplate above his head, and manfully does not think about the fact that he’s one million years old, and his joints literally creak when he gets up some mornings, and that he’s about to have an actual magical goddamn _spell_ cast on him by a guy he has spent the last year very pointedly not thinking about while jerking off.

Brandon is a goddamn adult. Sure, sometimes he clings to the technical definition of that with his fucking fingernails, but that doesn’t change the cold hard fact that he’s quite a ways past thirty.

It takes probably ten more minutes for Luc to sidle into the room, looking somewhat less like he wants to spontaneously combust. His face is still pink, but in a way which Brandon immediately, and annoyingly, clocks as being charming rather than hilarious.

“It’s a kissing spell,” says Luc, and the pinkness suddenly makes complete sense. “The kind that needs, uh, regular reinforcement. And lasts for fucking ages.” He licks his lips, then winces.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” replies Brandon, automatically. “A _soul link_." He may know fuck all about magic, but everyone's seen literally any movie ever made. "You’re telling me Nick and Bob were getting it on the _whole fucking time_?”

He _knew_ Nick had been bullshitting him when he said it was just ‘all really new, Dubi, honestly.’ Bastard.

Luc blinks at him. “You’re not -- gonna call off the thing?” He asks, halfway to a frown. 

“Kid, you kiss me, we’re only gonna have a problem if you use too much tongue.”

“Right,” says Luc, after a long pause. His fingertips start to spark, which makes Brandon have a couple of pants feelings he was hoping to avoid. 

Brandon has about half a second to regret every single life choice that has led to this point before Luc is kissing him, and then he’s not thinking about anything besides just how fucking long it’s been since he kissed anybody, let alone someone who apparently likes biting as much as he does.

He nips at Luc’s lower lip, mostly because he can, before drawing back. There’s none of the pins-and-needles feeling he associates with spellcasting. He narrows his eyes.

“You even cast the spell yet, kid?”

Luc, completely lost for words, shakes his head.

Brandon grins. “Better get back over here, then. I don’t have all day.”

As it turns out, though, he can make a little time for this. And Torts barely even laughs at him the next morning, even when he unwinds his scarf and the hickey comes into view.

**Author's Note:**

> title from shot through the heart and LEGITIMATELY RECOMMENDED BY A SEVEN YEAR OLD. this is what i am reduced to
> 
> there is no earthly way you won't guess who this is by, jay, but just know that i love you and the relative quality of this fic is in no way a reflection of how much, unless you think it's the best fic ever, in which case it totally is. <3.


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